Within seconds, the five newly-minted demigods found themselves transported. The air around them, at the merest flick of Tyler's wrist, bent and twisted, sunlight seeming to reflect off of it as if it were glass.
The boys felt themselves change as well, as if there bodies somehow could sense the group's intent. To be present yet unseen, strong yet untouchable, to see and not be heard.
The country track around them shimmered, faded, and just as suddenly reshaped into a familiar venue. The slick tiles and smooth concrete floor of the school gym.
The showers had just been turned off, leaving banks of hot mist wafting through the air. The five boys, intangible as they were in this moment, found the mist around and within them. They were as much a part of it as it was a part of them, as if nature itself was on their side, either out of deference or out of fear.
One solitary figure stepped out around the shower wall, slick from a recent washing. Tall, broad in the shoulders, with a head of rich black hair that complemented his olive skin...he was someone they knew well.
Jon was in their class, runningback on the football team. Popular and good-looking, he was also class treasurer, an odd position, and third rank down from president, but he didn't seem at all uncomfortable in the role of class bookkeeper.
'There's our mark', Tyler's voice seemed to hum through the mist, heard by the other four in a kind of hive mind, 'If any guy deserves it, it's Jacobs.'
'You think so?' Antonio seemed skeptical.
'Why, got something against him?' countered Carl.
'Just curious. I can think of a few other...'
But before he could fully communicate his thought, Jon called out to someone close by, "Vinny boy! Waiting for you to come in."
"Was getting a few laps in outside," panted the new arrival, a sweat stained Latino with bright green eyes and a thickly, almost comically gelled pompadour that was currently sagging a bit southerly, no doubt as a result of his outdoor excursions, "Don't wanna burst your bubble, brother, but I'm not keen on you outdoing me in practice every week."
"Hey, I don't like it either," Jon winked, "If I don't wanna burn out, I'm gonna need some healthy competition. Keep me fresh."
"You're a pisser, I hope you know that," but Vinny extended his hand for a quick fist bump which Jon returned, smiling.
"You busy tonight?" Jon asked, crossing over to the lockers to the other side of the room, where his still open gymbag sat on a solitary bench.
"Maybe..." Vinny bent down to untie his sneakers, rolling up one leg of his football pants as he did so, the better to scratch his calf, "Why?"
"Thinking we could head out someplace," Jon took a pair of sweatpants from the bag, which he unfurled with such a grandiose gesture he might as well have been rolling out a red carpet.
A strange, almost electric, impulse ran through the collective mass of the five in the fog at that moment. They all noticed, yet none commented. It was almost like it had come FROM one of them, maybe in relation to the scene playing out before them,
"Been too long since I've GONE anywhere, you know?"
"Yeah..." Vinny mused, kicking off one shoe, then the other, "Got anywhere special in mind, or...?"
At which point, another shock ran through the mist. Someone, it seemed, had taken action, unable to hold back any longer...